Ryka Aoki - Instructor

Ryka Aoki is the author of Seasonal Velocities, He Mele a Hilo (A Hilo Song) and Why Dust Shall Never Settle Upon This Soul. She is a two-time Lambda Award finalist and the winner of a University Award from the Academy of American Poets. She has appeared in Publishers Weekly, the Huffington Post, the Daily Dot, and was honored by the California State Senate for “extraordinary commitment to the visibility and well-being of Transgender people.” She worked with the American Association of Hiroshima Nagasaki A-Bomb Survivors, and two of her compositions were adopted as the organization’s official “songs of peace.” She is a professor of English at Santa Monica College.